UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

My bride and I retired to a small town 20 minutes west of Bloomington, IN--home of IU Football. Perhaps some of you have seen various pictures of two priests on social media, particularly Facebook, high fiving each other, holding Mendoza's Heisman trophy, and a few others. Clearly, they have been in attendance at IU's recent playoff games. These fellas are in-house Dominicans at St. Paul's Catholic Church ion the IU campus in Bloomington. However, they also minister for Masses each weekend in our little town at St. Agnes parish and happen to be personal friends of my bride and me. But this is only part of the story. Mendoza is a "raging" Catholic along with several other teammates who regularly attend Mass each week at St. Paul's. IU had never had a team priest / chaplain in all of these years of miserable football. Along came Cignetti, himself a Catholic, who immediately approached the Dominicans and asked them to be team priests. They accepted and now travel with the team to all IU games whenever possible. Sometimes only one can go but generally two of them go together. It's important to note that Cig initiated contact with the Dominicans but not at the urgings of Mendoza. So why has IU been so good the last two years? You can draw your own conclusions, but I believe it can be summed up in one word: culture. Mendoza gets a TON of credit for their on-field success, but Coach Cig gets credit for the huge change in culture. It's amazing that he / they have gotten these results in only two years. After ignoring my "home" team for nearly 60 years, I intend to root for IU in all football games except when they play ND!